(i) Technical Field
The present invention relates to a contact member, an image carrier, and an image forming apparatus.
(ii) Related Art
In the past, contact members to be disposed within image carriers (photoconductor drums) have hitherto been formed by extrusion. However, contact members are sometimes formed by injection molding for cost reduction. In this case, when molding a contact member, a resin material is sometimes injected into a mold from a side of an outer peripheral surface of the contact member to increase accuracy of the outer peripheral surface.
However, the protrusion amount of a gate mark serving as an injection port for the resin material varies. For this reason, the vibration characteristics of an image carrier in which the contact member is disposed sometimes vary.